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Computer and Information Ethics John Weckert and Douglas Adeney, Contributions to the Study of Computer Science, no. 4. G. E. Gorman, advisory editor. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997,192 pp. $59.95
Information ethics is practically an established branch of applied ethics, like biomedical ethics or business ethics. Journals (such as this one) are devoted to the topic, and new books that embody various stances and introductory methods are now commonplace. Weckert and Adeney have added to the mix with Computer and Information Ethics. More than any other text in the field that I am familiar with, theirs is "unashamedly philosophical." Reading it is like eavesdropping on philosophers at work: the authors actually reason about things, going back and forth about what might be acceptable or good in a given situation. It is this "slice of life" quality that makes the book interesting and valuable as a new contribution to information ethics.
There are 11 chapters in Computer and Information Ethics. The first two are the (obligatory) chapters about ethics. What is ethics? And, how does one scrunch into a few lucid pages a traditional that extends back to prehistory? These are the impossible questions that every applied ethicist must tackle first. To make light of one of the trade tools, it is sort of like stepping onto a "slippery slope." Once you commit yourself to a formula, there is no stopping the avalanche of what you must say in order to defend it.
One formula is to avoid talking about ethics at all, or, to talk about it as little as possible so as not to confuse people. This is the approach taken by Tom Forester and Perry Morrison in Computer Ethics: Cautionary Tales and Ethical Dilemmas in Computing (MIT, 1990). The book reads like a sensational newspaper, one case of egregious misbehavior being reported right after another one without much ethical reflection in between.
Another formula is to doggedly say everything conceivable about ethics so that the reader gets the full picture in all its confusing glory. This is...